The Best Est?

For a while now I’ve wondered what people truly thought of Ests besides wastes of time that are fun to train up.
So I ask you the community, what is the best to worst Est sort of characters you have used in a fire emblem games (or fangames) and why?

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Nino?

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As much as I like Nino I never found her really an amazing unit, the enemy quality in fe7 is pretty low so she can do things pretty quickly but I find her not that fun of a unit to train up. She actually is fairly slow unless you give her a body ring anyways.

For her character though she is probably my favorite Est and one of my top favorite characters in official FE.

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Gaiden/Echoes Est is in my eyes the best Est. Because Falcoknights deal bonus damage against monsters and Celica’s route is filled with them, Est is very nice to have. Celica’s late game has a lot of shitty terrain and having fliers that ignore that shitty terrain is simply amazing. Another nice bonus, is that most archers, snipers and bowknights don’t do bonus damage to fliers. This makes falcoknights really good.

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Est is the best Est

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Delthea from Gaiden/Echoes is actually capable of doing things at base without babying. Sure, she won’t juggernaut or anything early on but she has a better start compared to most Ests, which makes training her easier.

Although her class means she doesn’t promote until level 20 in FE2 and 14 in SOV

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From the Ests I’ve used I’d say that the worst Est I’ve used is Nino, there’s just no payoff to using her. You get Pent chapters earlier and he’s just straight up better than Nino will ever be and Nino uses the same weapon type as the Gato of fe7, Athos so she doesn’t even provide anything unique for that long or even on the final map.

The best Est I’ve used is probably Knoll from FE8. He’s the only dark magic user in the game unless you count creature campaign or you promoted Ewan to a shaman, a lot of people tend to dislike knoll but I think that’s probably because he at first doesn’t seem as useful as Canas did, however if you promote Knoll to a summoner he will undoubtedly become the most overpowered unit in your army. Being able to safely soak up at least one enemy action per turn and getting 10 exp every time he summons. Summoning is also just fun in fe8 in my opinion.

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and to be fair most units can’t juggernaut in FE2/15

Honestly my main argument with knoll is that, it isnt really him that is busted its more just the summoner class in general. Wouldn’t even really consider him a Est cause his growths really aren’t that special either and he comes ready to promote.

Feel the same about Nino though.

I mean fe8 isn’t like three houses where your units can become any class so the properties of the class can also be seen as a benefit for the character, especially when you can only get two in the base game, most people probably won’t even promote Ewan to a shaman. The only reason why I considered Knoll an est is because the wiki doesn’t have anything on the est archetype and the only source for commonly accepted ests listed knoll as one.

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Most people don’t realise this but i would say Dolph from FE11 is an Est.


As you can see he starts out at level 4, but with pretty respectable bases for that level, aswell as really good growths for SD standards. He appears in chapter 12, which is still early enough that he won’t necesarrily have to be fed kills with his stats.


These are his stats when reclassed as a Hunter, 11 base speed with 55% growth makes him formidable even if in theory early promoted at level 10.

Compare this to Est, who could be argued to be better stat wise, but appears 6 chapters later, so she requires more kill feeding.

Going back to the real question here. Are ests good? Yes and no, pure ests which have super high growths but low bases with a very late jointime are kinda meh. But i think Dolph like units who join at a middlepoint with managable bases, above average growths, but a low level, are great. I guess you could call em Est-lites.

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I would agree that Delthea usually feels like she has the most payoff because her growths in attack and speed are high enough that she’ll pretty much always be useful if trained while some Ests may have high growths but if they don’t proc enough, they won’t be anything special. I don’t really care about her late promotion because she tends to be unit who doesn’t get much of anything from her promotion other than the ability to heal (countering with swords often feels like more of a nerf than anything). Magic Ests are easier to train in general as well because high defense is a lot more common than high resistance in the late game, so physical Ests can struggle to do any damage to get the kills they need to level up.

I’ll also throw out my two cents on Nino. The magic users in FE7 seem to be designed in such a way that their magic stats are unlikely to be higher than mid to low twenties to ensure that Athos feels like the powerful sage that he’s supposed to be for the one chapter you get to use him. Nino is no exception, and with her bases and growths, she’s unlikely to be much better or worse than any other magic user in the game. I usually train her just because I’d rather have another Sage than most anything else, but she’s nothing amazing.

If I had more FE5 experience, I’d probably say Sara is best Est, but I don’t know that game very well.

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Training Sigrid to one round VQ’s final boss.

Caterina from Justice and Pride. Her bases aren’t too low that she can’t handle J&P’s frankly weak enemies and she joins with plenty of time left to train and use her, joining as early as chapter 15x. She also has paragon making it easier to train her and the option to promote to Bishop, giving her slayer which comes in handy as most of the lategame is just monsters.

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Don’t you mean which one is the BEst?

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If you mean gameplay wise I would say probably delthea. She isnt too hard to train up and she becomes pretty strong pretty quick and has a good spell list.

Pelleas can also be trained up very easily after he joins but even if you cap a bunch of stats his performance still isnt that great sadly.

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Surprised that PoR Elincia hasn’t been mentioned yet - flying and good movement and A rank Staves right out of the gate is pretty strong of a tool, even if her stats aren’t fantastic at base and her combat is rather mediocre. At least you can just BEXP and try to ride the 80% Mag growth for larger staff ranges.

Do you consider that final healer from FE5 a Est?
Anyway, Tailtliu is my best bc although she have to get the setup she’s actually great at the arena and she also gets staffs on promo so she’s not THAT hard to max out

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Elincia hardly even functions as a growth unit, really. She already joins with high mobility and A staves. Training her barely impacts how you use her, aside from getting her up to S staves for the Ashera Staff. Though this obviously means she’s a lot better than most Ests, it makes me wonder if she really fits in with them.

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